|
|
| Parkin Space |
 |
 Sometimes controversial, sometimes combative but with a liberal dose of common sense, Godfrey Parkin's columns take a sideways glance at topical training issues. To give your response to Godfrey's columns, click on "add comments to this article" at the end of the piece, or if you would like to contribute your own thoughts in a column, email the editor with your suggestion for a "The Way I See It" feature.
When Blending Doesn't Mix "Blended learning... the expression itself is a misnomer, and the learning experiences so labelled are often a disgrace to the training profession."
Welcome to the 21st Century Learning Arcade "Remember the arcade game Space Invaders? The more attackers you shot down, the more they spawned and mutated, and the faster they moved... Welcome to 21st century learning."
The Tail is Wagging the Dog "The training profession continues to abdicate to a gang of software developers our responsibility to evolve new learning processes."
E-Learning Adventures Beyond the LMS "The treasure map of e-learning has an island in the centre with a big X over the LMS... Outside of that island is blank space populated only by “here be dragons” warnings."
Intellectual Property and the Internet "Creative Commons (licence) has been around in the US since 2001... popular among those who publish online... as of November 1, there is a UK version of Creative Commons. "
Are We Ready for the Digital Generation? "By the time they enter the workforce, the digital native has spent 10,000 hours playing video games, sent and received 200,000 e-mails and instant messages, and spent 10,000 hours using mobile phones."
Podcasting - The Next Step for E-Learning "As a trainer, you can distribute content that is current and relevant... product or policy updates for your global salesforce, reinforcement for today’s classroom session, or daily micro-reminders from your online computer security course."
The Curious Skill That We Must Develop "If you had to choose only one, what skill would you teach that would significantly improve the performance of organisations?"
Why Would Anyone Become a Trainer? "Are there inherent personal characteristics that determine whether a trainer will thrive or merely survive?"
Training for the Outsourcing Decade "I am stunned that no one else in the training profession seems to care about the Indo-China syndrome... The impact on training and trainers may be dramatic."
Adventures Beyond the LMS Part II"Letting your LMS be the primary determinant of the limits and scope of your learning endeavors is like refusing to eat anything that cannot be nuked in a microwave oven."
Technology and the Trainer "In 2004 technology appeared to be coming out of the post-bubble-burst doldrums and into our lives as never before... So what does it all mean for learning? Rather a lot, if you are looking to exploit it."
Reclaim the Power of Your Presentation "PowerPoint is audience-abusive, presenter-addictive, and information-transfer sclerotic. But with a little determination, it is possible to stop it from calling the shots and take back control of your communication."
Smile Sheets Can't Bring You True Happiness "They are at best a blurred snapshot of customer satisfaction at the time, nothing more. But we continue to use and revere them."
Change is the Only Certainty "Preparing for the future is not about taking courses in e-learning authoring. It is more important to have the conceptual skills, the project management skills, and the skills of an agent of change."
Take the Right Measures "To be useful, any survey has to have clear objectives that are measurable, actionable, and meaningful."
Is the Trainer an Endangered Species? "Every survey over the past five years has had corporations calling for greater and greater percentages of their training to be done online. So is the trainer an endangered species?"
The Rise of the OD Practitioner "Training focuses on improving the performance of individuals and teams; OD focuses on a bigger picture, improving the performance of systems, structures, and processes, as well as looking at the people."
Is E-Learning Missing the Point? "I am passionate about e-learning in principle, but pragmatic about it in application. And I am perturbed by the direction in which it is moving."
A New Paradigm for Learning "Corporate employees, particularly knowledge workers, learn three times more from informal experiences than they do in formal courses."
Work Skills are the Tip of the Iceberg "In any company, each employee has a rich set of talents that never makes it to the surface in the work environment."
Simulations in Learning "While there are plenty of low-end simulations in the field of software tools training, we are not seeing the same in soft skills training."
How to Devise an E-Learning Strategy "How do you find your way through the techno-hype to make sound strategic e-learning decisions? The first step is to understand that your e-learning strategy is part your learning strategy, and is not something separate."
How to Select an LMS "This is to be read in conjunction with my frequent admonitions to not allow the Learning Management System (LMS) to define your learning processes."
Holy Grail or Poisoned Chalice? "For some years now, the notion of competency-based learning management (CBLM) has been viewed by training departments as the Holy Grail. But... it can do real damage to a company’s viability."
Xcus me, i hv smthg 2 say "Digital deftness has corroded punctuality and redefined attentiveness, by changing our sense of time, place, and focus."
Venture Beyond the Smile Sheet "Setting objectives that do not look beyond the point where a learner hands in his/her smile-sheet is abdicating responsibility for the effectiveness of training."
E-Earning in the US "Why are trainers, who contribute so much to the actual effectiveness of training, so obviously undervalued by their organisations?"
The Retirement Brain Drain "In most Western countries, the baby boomer bubble is causing concern for those planning pension and social security services. It should also be worrying employers."
The Definition of Training Needs Analysis "'TNA', rather like 'e-learning' or 'evaluation”' is one of those Alice in Wonderland terms that means exactly what you want it to mean."
The Future of Learning "The most profound shift that will take place in training over the next three years is a movement away from traditional, formal, course-based learning and towards clever integration into the workflow of learning-enabling tools "
Protect Their Privacy "There is an urgent need for training in security and privacy for all personnel in any business that accepts and uses customer information."
Get a Strategy "Without an evaluation strategy, we are left floundering every time someone asks what our return on investment (ROI) on training is."
The Learning Object Paradox "Parkin's Learning Object Paradox states that: 'The more reusable a learning object becomes, the less useable it is.'"
Metrics with Meaning "We spend way too much time trying to placate financial people by contorting our world to fit their frame of reference."
What are we Teaching Managers? "Nothing is more guaranteed to have you occupying the same desk for decades than doing a good job and passively waiting to be recognised."
Revisiting Kirkpatrick's Level One "I advocate getting rid of the smile sheet completely, and replacing that tortured questionnaire with one closed question, plus an open follow-up to encourage respondents to reveal what really matters to them."
Sum Total and Pathlore May Change the Training Market "There are very few “big” LMS-only vendors left in the market... the new entity will have a third of the LMS market."
Evaluation Professionals are Undervalued "The evaluation of training is too important to be left to trainers."
The Prosumer Future for Learning "In training, we are seeing prosumer concepts like informal learning, workflow learning, and collaborative learning coming into vogue."
How to Design an Evaluation Survey 19 steps to help you create the perfect questionnaire.
Playing it Safe? "It baffles me why we in training are so slow to evolve. Our role in training is to prepare people for the future, yet we cling tenaciously to the past."
The Future is Getting Smaller "Can traditional learning experiences be decimated and served up in nano-chunks without losing effectiveness? Or might they actually be enhanced?"
Learning in Tomorrow's World"The study asked this digitally savvy group what they would like to see invented that would help kids learn in the future."
Who Says Learning Should be Fun? "At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I am becoming increasingly exasperated by the extent to which “fun” is specified as a requirement of learning design."
The Learning Pressure on Trainers "The hard-working trainer gets maligned by just about everyone... not for doing a bad job but for not attaining a Renaissance Man/Woman status."
Secret Shopping at Level Three "For a wide range of customer contact skills at Level Three, secret shopping can tell us a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of our training and its impact on behaviour."
E-learning in the Fast Lane "E-learning, as it exists in the mainstream today, is learning at the old Ford Model-T stage. You can have any colour you want so long as it’s black."
Training - Profession or Occupation? "We need a really 'professional' certification process, involving education, training, experience, referrals, rigorous testing of knowledge and performance."
Beyond Certification "Certification says nothing about quality or richness of experience and does not measure or reflect all the fuzzy hard-to-quantify characteristics that distinguish a ‘seasoned professional’ from a rank beginner."
|
|
|
| Welcome
|  |
|
Godfrey Parkin has 25 years experience in training and development.
He spent a decade with A.C. Nielsen – during much of which he ran their international management services operation in Switzerland. In the mid-90’s he launched a learning simulations company in London before moving to the US to start an e-learning company.
His consulting firm, MindRise, focuses on using emergent internet technologies in training and performance improvement initiatives. His clients have included Cisco Systems, Nestlé, IBM, Credit Suisse, Unilever, and Kepner-Tregoe.
Godfrey also moderates the American Society for Training and Development's e-learning forum and is a regular conference speaker.
|
|
